


The Real Boy

by Loz



Category: Life on Mars (UK)
Genre: Fluff and Humor, Friendship, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-29
Updated: 2016-03-29
Packaged: 2018-05-29 21:31:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,542
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6394606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Loz/pseuds/Loz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“What makes you happy, Sam?” Annie asks him, one day in May. And Sam? He has no clue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Real Boy

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Dana. <3

“What makes you happy, Sam?” Annie asks him, one day in May. She’s frustrated, because he’s been conducting an audit on CID’s paperwork and his findings have not been favourable. He can never figure out if it’s better or worse when he doesn’t mean to be an insufferable prick, but clearly is one. 

He considers the question from multiple angles, tries to formulate an adequate response.

“I don’t know,” he says with a shrug of one shoulder. “It’s not something I’ve given much thought to, before.”

Annie’s expression is a worrying mix of pity and annoyance – the kind of look you’d give a yapping dog in a neighbouring garden. Sam’s painfully aware he’s failing her in some way, but he doesn’t know how to fix it. 

“Maybe you should,” she says, that combination of soft sweetness and biting that Sam’s never heard from anyone else before. 

*

So, Sam thinks about it. His more self-aware side argues that over-analysing means he’ll never have an uncompromised view, that you can’t go through life dissecting every emotion - the whole point is to feel them. But Sam’s a detective, and he’s been handed a mystery. One where the leads are beginning to go cold. His favourite kind of challenge. Therefore, Sam spends an inordinate amount of time in contemplation.

It’s easy to catalogue and dismiss the simple pleasures - family, food and fucking - as things that give him temporary joy. It also explains why he’s so rarely joyous in this time, having to contend with a dearth of each in various degrees. But temporary joy is a different beast from happiness, he thinks. 

Then he comes to the idea of a sense of purpose, of finding his place, the persistent need to keep going. That’s what makes him survive. He sometimes feels victorious? He occasionally has moments of power and righteousness.

Happiness, it seems, isn’t just a warm gun, it’s also elusive as fuck. 

“Samuel, you have that look about you again,” Gene says, bursting into Sam’s reverie with metaphorical guns blazing. He’s good at that. Sam’s sitting in the cafeteria with a plate of unappetising-looking shepherd’s pie and a glass of upsettingly murky water.

“What look, Guv?” Sam supplies, because if he doesn’t play along, Gene also gets a look on his face and it’s sometimes a bit like a punch to the gut. But worse. Because Gene’s angry at actual punches, and this has an edge of sadness to it. 

“Constipation.”

Sam snuffs a snort. “Sounds about right.”

“All-Bran,” Gene suggests. “Flush you right out.”

“I’m suffering from an emotional constipation,” Sam responds. “Somehow I don’t think cereal’s gonna cut it.”

“I do so love it when you dribble shit.”

“I thought we were in this midst of establishing that it’s a difficulty of late?”

“Except you just said it wasn’t.”

“Good point. I didn’t know you were paying attention.”

Gene sits across from him at the table, swipes his fork and stabs at a pea. “I always pay attention.” He loads his fork up with more pie and swallows around it. Gene eating is always a spectacle and Sam is but a man, he cannot look away. 

“What’s got your knick-knocks in a knot?” Gene asks after clearing half of Sam’s plate.

Sam trusts Gene. It’s strange, but it’s true. The moment Gene confided in him, he found himself wanting to be open in return. Sometimes, he can’t be. Often, that hurts. In this, though, he can be honest. He can say what’s on his mind and brace himself for Gene’s sure mockery. 

“What makes you happy, Gene?”

“This isn’t another workplace evaluation, is it? I’m still recovering from the last.”

“No. Just wondering.”

Gene gives him an assessing glare, forehead furrowed. “Does it have to be specific?”

“We’re not playing charades. I’m curious, is all.”

Gene leans over the table and pokes Sam with the fork. Sam rears back, slaps it out of his hand, scowling, muttering, “What the bloody hell?”.

“I should have you know this isn’t the first time I’ve given serious consideration to you being a robot,” Gene says. 

“Well, thanks.” Sam sighs before he can stop himself. “Annie asked me what makes me happy and I couldn’t answer.”

“And you thought you’d steal my reasons? It’s different for everyone, isn’t it, you nerk?”

“Yes, but we’re not as different as we sometimes make out, are we, and I reckoned if I knew what made you happy, it’d give me some pointers as to what works for me.”

Gene’s whole face radiates disgust. “Christ, that’s sad.”

Sam chops up the pathetic boiled carrots on his plate. “Forget it.”

*

But over the next few weeks it’s pretty obvious Gene doesn’t forget it. In another life, Sam might’ve found Gene’s persistence disturbing. Or invasive. Angering, even. Here, in 1973, with no internet to take up his lonely hours, or endless reality tv shows on telly to break up the monotony, it’s diverting. 

Gene tries to ‘help’ Sam find happiness.

He brings him different flavoured whiskies to drink. Sam can’t properly tell the difference between any of them, only liking how they make him go loose-limbed, but he won’t tell Gene that. 

He magnanimously lets Sam cook for him – the less said about that, the better, considering it involves fire, Gene chucking a frying pan out the window into Sam’s landlady’s petunias, and a string of swear-words heretofore never heard by Gene’s rather more conservative than Sam would’ve thought’s ears. 

He takes him to a football match. That one’s actually good. They go to the flicks together a few times. That’s surprisingly good too.

He assigns Sam some of the most interesting cases that cross his desk, gives him his own filing cabinet, and concedes that Sam was right about the suspect in the latest armed robbery they had to attend to. 

It’s oddly gratifying, having Gene’s attention. Sam finds himself smiling more, loosening up. Not to the point where he’ll let his colleagues get away with sloppy work, but to the point where he won’t take it all like a personal slight. Annie gives him an approving once-over and friendly pat on the back. 

“I like you like this,” she says, all gentleness and wisdom. “It suits you.”

“What does?” Sam asks, because Annie seems to know him better than most everyone he’s ever known.

“You know what, Sam Tyler,” Annie says, because yes, she does know him, and no, she won’t let him get away with anything. 

*

“You sorted it out, yet?” Gene asks him one Friday evening at the beginning of June. They’re in Gene’s office while Betty vacuums the rest of CID. It’s warm, so Sam has his sleeves rolled up and has undone his top button. A fan whirrs nearby. “What turns you into a real boy?”

“Ah, fuck, it was love all along, wasn’t it?” Sam replies, shaking his head. He gives a self-satisfied smirk.

Gene looks at him from under his lashes. “What movie’ve you seen? To become a real boy you’ve gotta be brave, truthful, and unselfish.”

“Then no, I haven’t sorted it out. You’ll just have to keep trying to show me how.”

Gene places his whisky glass on his table with a significant thump. “That’s how you want to play it, is it?”

Sam trusts Gene and he’s feeling light-hearted and knowledgeable – like he finally understands a language he’s been struggling with for far too long. “Yeah, I think so.”

Gene tosses his head back, tuts at the ceiling. He clambers up out of his chair and hoists Sam from his own. Sam doesn’t turn into dead weight, choosing instead to assist Gene with a push on the table.

“Kiss me,” Gene commands.

Sam is, truly, a little taken aback by that. Not that things haven’t been brewing between them, but he expected more obfuscation, less verbalisation. He expected Gene to simply do what he wanted. “What?”

“Brave, truthful and unselfish, Sammy-boy,” Gene says quietly. 

Sam takes a slow, deep breath, then lets it out with a gust. He narrows his eyes at Gene, concentrates on his lips. He crowds in close to him, rests his hands on his sides, tilts his head. 

He’s trying to tease Gene into kissing him first. He isn’t succeeding.

Eventually, Sam realises he’s going to have to comply with Gene’s wishes. His heart’s beating seventy miles per hour, there’s a bead of sweat inching onto his collarbone, and he’s never been as full of anticipation and unbridled joy as in this very moment. 

He presses his lips softly against Gene’s, captures his lower lip in a small suck that elicits the rawest of groans. Gene nudges him even closer with a hand to the small of his back, moves into the kiss like it’s second nature. It’s warm and passionate, but not frenzied. It’s slow and involving, and Sam can’t help but hum as Gene’s fingers slide under his shirt and play against his skin. 

“Happy?” Gene asks when they finally pull apart.

“Very,” Sam replies. “You?”

Gene gives a shrug. His face is a careful, neutral blank. “Not sure. I might need convincing.”

Sam’s grin could probably be described as beatific. “You’re such a dick.”

Gene raises an eyebrow and Sam just knows what’s coming next.


End file.
